Water Sector In Ghana Research Articles

Households’ access and expenditure on water services: Examining intra-urban differences in the Accra metropolis, Ghana

Despite years of investment into the water sector in Ghana, access to and expenditure on potable water for drinking and domestic use remain a challenge for most urban households. However, within the urban context, the severity of water challenges varies from one residential community to another, with less research attention often given to such intra-urban differences. To address this gap, this study examines differences in household access and expenditure on pipe-borne water in three varying socio-economic residential communities in Accra. The study used a convergent mixed method design and drew on secondary literature, to examine the differences in households' access to and expenditure on water. The findings revealed that Jamestown, a low-income residential community, had the lowest connection to the Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL) grid, with many respondents depending on pipe-borne water outside dwellings operated by private water retailers. While the findings showed no significant differences in the regularity of flow and expenditure on water among the three varying socio-economic communities, the paper argues that low-income communities such as Jamestown are likely to be more affected due to existing socio-economic deprivation and vulnerability contexts. Based on the study findings, we recommend that efforts be made to increase investment in water infrastructure to enable households to connect to the GWCL grid. Attention should also be given to low-income households, who often lack the means to pay for services that will enable them to connect to the GWCL grid. Further, we recommend improved collaboration between local communities and GWCL as a way of fostering strategies that address the peculiar water challenges in local communities.

Developing a framework for effective institutional management of Ghana's urban water supply

PurposeA viable framework has been proven to reduce operational and institutional inefficiencies in the urban water supply sector. The absence of drivers necessary to develop a framework may have hindered institutional development and effective Ghanaian urban water supply management. Thus, the research aims to identify the drivers and develop a framework for effectively managing the urban water supply in Ghana.Design/methodology/approachThe study utilised a qualitative research design approach and analysed collected data to proffer answers to the research questions. The research sampled 19 participants, and saturation was achieved.FindingsFindings identified drivers for developing Ghana's urban water supply framework. They categorised them into the availability of water supply resources, the level of professionalism of the personnel, the provision of accessible quality water, the efficient management system of water supply, prudent financial management, ethics for managing water supply and the culture of managing water supply. These pertinent constructs form components of Ghana's urban water sector framework.Originality/valueBesides supporting transformation and sustainability to develop a framework for managing Ghana's urban water supply sector, policymakers may utilise the developed model to evaluate public urban water supply compliance with Ghana's water sector performance.

Toward good governance in water resources management in Ghana

AbstractIn the global water policy literature, integrating governance principles into water resources management is projected as the best approach to overcome the crisis in water resources management. Therefore, since 1990, many countries, including Ghana, have introduced various changes in their water sector to encourage good governance in the management of the resource. Using interviews and a review of policy and regulatory documents, this study examines recent changes in the water sector in Ghana to identify challenges for good governance in water resources management. The results suggest that the introduction of a new institutional framework and several regulatory mechanisms, including policies, rules, regulations, and laws, has decentralized water management system, increased stakeholder participation, granted voice to marginalized stakeholders, and brought government and communities together in the decision‐making process. However, the results further reveal that several challenges, including institutional barriers, exclusion or underrepresentation of key stakeholders, corruption, multisectoral conflict, collaboration preferences, and others continue to frustrate good governance in water resources management. Deliberately committing to the principles of good governance, amending ineffective regulatory mechanisms, and adequately resourcing regulatory institutions can help avoid many of the challenges in the water sector and propel the country toward sustainable water resources management.

The limits and impact of communication and context in implementing social interventions in a pandemic: Ghana's free water policy revisited

The study examined the implementation of the free water intervention initiated by the government of Ghana during the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic. The study deployed a case study design within the qualitative research method. A total of 22 respondents were interviewed for the study. Findings from the study revealed that the implementation suffered some challenges which mostly stemmed from both the suddenness of the intervention and the complex context of the water sector in Ghana. The abruptness of the intervention resulted in poor communication and little or no consultation between the presidency and the implementer. The other major setback was the withdrawal of services by many tanker drivers from the supply of free water to designated Covid-19 reservoirs due to delays in reimbursement by the government. Furthermore, there was no effective monitoring mechanism to ensure complete adherence to the policy directive by both household vendors and landlords. Generally, the objective of the intervention to provide free water to all was largely ineffective due to the challenges highlighted above.

Willingness to pay for reliable piped water services: evidence from urban Ghana

The primary objective of this research is to estimate the willingness to pay in Ghana for reliable piped water services. Three competing economic valuation approaches are used to do this: the contingent valuation method (CVM), the hedonic pricing method (HPM) and the travel cost method (TCM). These methods allow for easy robustness tests of the estimates and serves as an improvement on previous research. Using survey data from a sample of 1,650 urban households, we obtain estimates of the willingness of households to pay every month for urban piped water services of: GHS 47.80 or US$15.25 (CVM), GHS 44.73 or US$14.27 (HPM) and GHS 22.72 or US$725 (TCM). Such sums account for 3–8% of household income. These empirical calculations are then used to inform policy choices by determining the economic viability of the participation of the private sector in the water sector in Ghana.

Beyond the MDG water target to universal water coverage in Ghana: the key transformative shifts required

Abstract Ghana achieved its Millennium Development Goal (MDG) water target about a decade before the 2015 deadline. However, as the world shifts focus to achieving sustainable universal water coverage, there is the need for redoubled efforts to keep up this feat. This paper examines the success drivers and the major transformative shifts required to sustain efforts in Ghana's water sector. The findings indicate that the successes chalked in Ghana's water sector have been largely fuelled by strong donor support and a well organised institutional and policy framework. About 90% of funding for the sector has been contributed by donors and creditors while actual government expenditure remains below 0.5% of GDP. The country has a strong policy and institutional framework guiding developments in the water sector. Nevertheless, the dwindling donor support, poor cost recovery mechanisms in the sector, ineffective strategies for ensuring human right to water, unbridled pollution of freshwater resources, poor borehole construction, and poor environmental sanitation across the country threaten to unwind the progress made in the sector. Without a paradigm shift, these could potentially derail efforts at achieving and sustaining universal water coverage. The paper discusses how these issues can be addressed to ensure universal access to potable water in the country.

Towards sustainable utilisation of water resources: a comprehensive analysis of Ghana's National Water Policy

In the years ahead, meeting the challenges of food security in a water scarce world will require drastic changes in the way water resources are managed. Accordingly, Ghana's water sector has seen tremendous changes over the years culminating in the 2007 National Water Policy. This paper evaluates the policy to highlight its strengths and weaknesses, to inform possible future review and guide new policy development in developing countries or troubleshoot existing policies. It draws on a framework based on three thematic areas distilled from global water policy development guidelines. Using a 3-point Likert scale, sub-thematic components are ranked and used to quantitatively compute the theme-specific scores (TSS) and the overall performance (OP) of the policy. Per the study findings, cross-cutting water policy issues including integrated water resources management, climate change adaptation and gender mainstreaming are more highlighted (TSS = 67%) than country-specific water management issues (TSS = 50%). Specifically, the policy neglects key national issues including protection of coastal regions from the onslaught of sea waves, and water resource protection against oil spills, and its institutional framework for implementation excludes key sector institutions. Generally, the policy addresses most pertinent issues in the water sector (OP = 64%) and areas for improvement are further discussed in the paper.

A Political Economy of Privatization Contracts: The Case of Water and Sanitation in Ghana and Argentina

In general, the process and outcomes of privatization have been studied from the point of view of efficiency. In this article, we consider issues in the course of contract design, implementation, management and enforcement in privatized public services and utilities. The study is based on two case studies, involving several water concessions in Argentina and a management contract in the urban water sector in Ghana. Three key arguments are presented on the basis of these case studies. The first is that an individualistic analytical framework is often utilized by the mainstream economic perspectives, but these are inadequate for a comparative assessment of private versus public provision in public services where there are distinct collective or group interests and hence a wider socio-economic context and representation of different interests becomes highly important. Instead, the article proposes a political economy perspective, which pays due attention to distributional issues, group interests, ideology of states and power relations for the assessment of privatization contracts. Second, the administrative capacity of states and their resources play a key role for the outcomes of privatization. Finally, while some contractual issues could be resolved through resourcing and experience over time, others are inherent to the contractual relations with little prospect of remedy.

A critical assessment of the incomplete contracts theory for private participation in public services: the case of the water sector in Ghana

This paper provides a critical analysis of the recent developments in the incomplete contracts theory and its conclusions for privatisation of public services. Drawing on a case study of management contract for urban water services in Ghana and highlighting the flaws in the theory, the article argues that contractual incompleteness does not provide a uniform guidance on efficient forms of ownership. We argue that methodological individualism utilised in the theory is particularly ineffective for its application to public services where direct or indirect contractual role of the state cannot be eliminated. The sterility of the theory with respect to political, institutional and distributional context of public service delivery is identified as an important weakness. Copyright , Oxford University Press.

Citizenship, Civil Society, and Development: Interconnections in a Global World

1. Citizenship, Civil Society, and Development: Interconnections in a Global World 2. Citizenship Quality: A New Agenda for Development? 3. Water Privatization and Social Citizenship: The Case of Urban Water Sector in Ghana 4. CSO Law in Ethiopia: Considering its Constraints and Consequences 5. Cooperation for the Enhancement of Environmental Citizenship in the Context of Securitization: The Case of an OSCE Project in Serbia 6. The Arab Spring Meets the Occupy Wall Street Movement: Examples of Changing Definitions of Citizenship in a Global World

Water Privatization and Social Citizenship: The Case of Urban Water Sector in Ghana

The impact of globalization on citizenship has recently gathered considerable academic attention. In the literature it is assumed that globalization will alter citizenship, either by constraining or enabling it. The article explores this question through the relationship between water privatization and social citizenship. It asks to what extent privatization, as an aspect of globalization, alters people's social right to water. Drawing from interviews and documents collected in 2008 and 2009, and a review of secondary literature, the article argues that in Ghana's capital Accra, water privatization left people's social citizenship relatively unchanged. The study shows how social citizenship is rooted in its historical context of unequal access to water in a post-colonial society, and how the privatization policy was mediated by this context, bringing relatively little change. Instead, many flexible, self-enforced social citizenships are in place which challenge the universal notions of Western political theory and which continued to operate under the privatization arrangement. The article concludes that in some cases, globalization influences citizenship less than previous literature argues, and suggests that for making balanced arguments, debates about water privatization need to take the contextual dynamics of specific settings more carefully into account.

The boundaries and limits of community management: Lessons from the water sector in Ghana

Community management, a central part of community development, has gained wide acceptance among service intermediaries as a result of the failure of the top-down approach to community development. Govern- mental policy instruments therefore aim at a bottom-up approach in basic service delivery such as health care, water supply and sanitation without adequate critique of the circumstances. Operationally, the extent to which community management can be inserted into develop- ment strategies has remained elusive with mixed and often costly results. This paper critically examines community management and suggests some recommendations to help service intermediaries in the application of community management in communities larger than rural villages.

Performance Contracting In Practice: Experience and lessons from the water sector in Ghana

This article provides some insights into how performance contracting works in practice in a developing country context, using the case of the Ghana Water and Sewerage Corporation (GWSC). Performance contracting has been a useful instrument for restructuring the state-owned enterprises (SOE) sector in Ghana, and the GWSC has made some moderate improvements since its introduction. However, the article highlights some of the institutional constraints and capacity issues that reformers will have to pay attention to, including overstretched capacity of the monitoring agency, a weak information management system and inconsistent compliance to contract by government. The findings also highlight the difficulty of separating politics from operational/management issues, especially in politically sensitive public services, yet performance contracting relies on such separation to be effective. Also it shows how informal behaviour undermines the formality of performance contracting.

Performance Contracting In Practice: Experience and lessons from the water sector in Ghana

Performance Contracting In Practice: Experience and lessons from the water sector in Ghana

Privatizing Ghana's water sector — interested parties and stakeholders

The free-market model may be appropriate when looking at providing water to large cities, but is it a model possible to replicate in Africa's small towns and rural communities? And what are the alternatives?

Policy on Private Water Sales in Rural Ghana

This paper examines strategies for forming public‐private sector partnerships in order to improve the distribution of water in rural areas in Ghana. The options explored include: (1) An outright sale of the existing government‐controlled water corporation; (2) setting up decentralized regional water utilities; (3) maintaining the existing central authority but contracting out services to the private sector; (4) charging user fees for water services based on the cost of producing and distributing the water; and (5) encouraging private and community‐level institutions to participate in the water market. Based on a limited case study, the paper finds a wide disparity between public and private prices of water, which points to a need for more‐rigorous pilot programs and studies to further explore alternatives for public‐private partnerships in the Ghana water sector.